A Ryanair passenger who was apparently quite late for his flight at the Barajas airport in Madrid last Friday went to desperate lengths in order to catch his plane: He ran full-throttle across the tarmac in attempt to get on the flight he missed. The flight was traveling from Madrid to the Canary Islands, and the unnamed passenger must have really wanted to just be on vacation already.
A video of the sprinting event was captured by airport employees, who posted it to Facebook on Saturday. Since then the video has racked up 719,000 views and over 2,000 reactions. The caption for the video reads,
This is how passengers in Madrid behave when they don't arrive in time for their flights. This particular passenger was missing a Ryanair flight and, unbelievably, skipped several security protocols established by AENA in their airports. We're talking about level 4 security protocols! Not even with all those protocols can one feel safe...
In the video, the passenger can be seen in shorts and a t-shirt, jumping from a gate ramp and onto the tarmac, where he proceeded to make a speedy chase for his flight. Airport security nabbed the would-be passenger before he actually made it to the plane he was chasing—which turned out not to be his.
According to the Guardian, authorities told the passenger to wait for police to arrive, but realizing that he had been chasing the wrong plane, the passenger somehow both found and boarded the flight he (very) nearly missed. He was arrested once he arrived in the Canary Islands and was then released.
Aena, Spain's airport authority, confirmed the incident, and said that the runaway passenger "[B]roke through a fire escape, the doors opened and he got out that way," the Guardian further reported. Aena added, "This person had cleared security and had no terrorist motivations. He was never suspected of being a terrorist."
